


tethered, chafed skin

by NeverEverFaceTheDark



Category: The 100 (TV)
Genre: Gen, she is my problematic fav, tiny character study
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-02-11
Updated: 2016-02-11
Packaged: 2018-05-19 19:09:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 479
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5977951
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/NeverEverFaceTheDark/pseuds/NeverEverFaceTheDark
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>clarke griffin and choices</p>
            </blockquote>





	tethered, chafed skin

Oh, she is compassionate. And she is vicious. She is a monster because she chooses to be. Because she chooses to live, to tattoo her tongue with 'my people'. Everything she is was born between narrow metal walls - on the other side; the void, hungry and silent. The openness of the ground makes her heart race for four seconds. Then she starts tying threads around what's made it down. She does not wish to watch anybody die of hunger, of infighting, or dehydration. It propells her feet across the springy surface of the forest ground, branches snapping. These are sensations she has never felt; sounds she has never heard. Five hours later they have receded to the background of the world forever - almost as quickly as she shook herself of the miracle of the sun.

She is a monster because she chooses to be, but she drags her feet. She says 'you must know I did not mean for him to get hurt' after she nods and the belt slices into flesh and she looks away. It doesn't even work.  
She says 'shhhhh' and presses a hand to the mouth of the man whose throat she's slit with a scalpel - a healer's knife. No hesitation.  
She says 'we are not grounders' and burns three hundred lives.  
She says 'this is wrong' but goes anyway.  
She says 'we had no choice' looking upon what she has wrought by pulling a lever, after burning babies alive - a pattern. 'I did what I had to do', she says after running.

She drags her feet running.

They are the last of humankind. They are the only people she has ever known. The only others who know what it was like to suffocate smothered by each other's breath. Could any part of her exist without them?

Their lives pull on her. She has been told that they must survive, every day of school for 17 years. She shoots a gun for the first time and feels exhiliration, she shoots a gun and doesn't blink the wet from her eyes, twohundred and fiftyone dead. One of her own alive, another safe inside Mt. Weather's walls. She shoots a gun and kills all possibility of negotiating with a grieving son.

She goes out to bring back food for close to a 100 kids, goes out to save Jasper from hostile spears, to bring back medicine for a boy who's dying, goes out to demand justice for a friend, to stop a mob from repeating what they've learned, goes out to save a girl from a furious young man, goes out to save the Ark from suffocation, to bring back blankets and guns, to make peace with those whom they have turned into enemies, goes out to save the boy she loves - and kill him, to protect, protect, protect.

She chooses to protect all that she is.


End file.
